Comic Books Are Burning In Hell – Details, episodes & analysis

If you're keeping track of these, this is number eight. When did we record it? None of your business, turkey hunters! This time around, on Batman Books Are Burning In Hell, Matt Seneca & Tucker Stone are talking about Batman: Strange Apparitions by Steve Englehart & Marshall Rogers.

On this episode, Tucker, Chris & Joe tackle the latest Kazuo Umezz books to make it to American shores: My Name Is Shingo! And that's not the only comic that came across the US Border under the microscope...they're also all about Batman, and his adventures with Italian mainstay, Dylan Dog. Does this Caped Crusader appearance mean more Batman yakking? You guessed right, True Believer!

Say hello to Joe McCulloch, everybody! Co-editor of TCJ.com, formerly of Comics Comics, Savage Critics, and the legendary Jog the Blog, Joe is the headliner of our main show Comic Books are Burning in Hell, and the best comics critic of the internet era. There's no other way to say it: no one since Gary Groth has contributed as much high level writing and thinking about the form as Joe. But even the greats are fallible! Case in point: this episode, in which he deigns to babble about Bryan Talbot and Batman at great length with us. That's right folks: it's time for a podcast about some all-time Serious Superhero Comics, the great Legends of the Dark Knight deep cut BATMAN: MASK. Wanna listen?

Green Lantern, the guy who created the Double Dragon side-scroller, Tucker's mistaken "let's interrupt people" idea, Donny Cates Hulk comic, very old school podcast stuff, Akira, Jack Kirby's Silver Star, Koike's Heaven's Door, the Legends of DC Universe featuring Steve Rude, and the new Jack Reacher book. It's one of our biggest and messiest podcasts in a good long while: climb aboard and GRAB AHOLD!

Welcome once again to Batman Books are Burning in Hell, where this time Tucker and Matt are joined by none other than Cliff Chiang, master cartoonist behind the best superhero comic to hit the stands since some of those old ones we usually talk about -- CATWOMAN: LONELY CITY. Whip-smart, addictively paced, and visually stunning, LONELY CITY is a hardboiled "one last score" crime novel that dons Batman-universe drag and absolutely werks it while tossing off no-shit social commentary that's as cutting as it is intelligent. It's a throwback to the type of dense, creator-driven, legitimately mature Batman sagas of the late '80s and early '90s that we created this show to discuss.. That Cliff is one of comics' most thoughtful interview subjects is the cherry on top. We're very proud to present this interview, so stop reading these words and start listening to it now! 

It's time for another installment in: the boys read some Tsuge! This time around, they're drinking in Red Flowers, the latest development in Yoshiharu Tsuge archival studies, in this, a look at the second volume of his mature tales! IS THAT AN ANTLION TALE? It is, you frisky freak! But wait? A salamander as well? B'twixt my shanty!

Chris, Matt, Joe & Tucker get together to talk about some of the comics that hit them the hardest this year. Less a back and forth, more a roundtable ramble: no list is coming, you'll have to listen to find out more!

Welcome back to Batman Books Are Burning In Hell, where this episode Tucker and Matt are joined by special guest star and master cartoonist Anya Davidson! Anya's work sometimes seems to encompass the whole history of American comics, harnessing the raw current of energy tapped by everyone from George Herriman to Jack Kirby to Fort Thunder - but it's also a world of its very own, its artist dancing in perfect counterpoint to a music only she can hear. Books like School Spirits, Band For Life, and Lovers in the Garden are as notable for their expert markmaking and perfectly composed sequences as they are for their rare level of commitment to building characters and the big heart beating underneath their skin. They're also vvery vveird stuff, so we are absolutely gassed to present a conversation about one of the all-time best Bizarre Batman Comics: The Jungle Cat-Queen (1954), by the legendary Dick Sprang, with writer Edmond Hamilton and inker Charles Paris, as presented in Detective Comics #211. This is the stuff that dreams are made of - LISTEN UP

Welcome once again to Batman Books Are Burning In Hell, this week featuring special guest sta- hey wait a second, how'd he get in here? Chris Mautner? It's Chris Mautner, people! If you've literally never listened to an episode of our eleven year old comic book podcast before, Chris boasts a top-5 resume as a comics critic, with a portfolio of work for The Comics Journal, Blog@Newsarama, Robot 6, The Smart Set, and probably ten or twelve other publications I'm forgetting. He's also 1/4th of Comic Books Are Burning In Hell, and a big nerd who really took this show's bit between his teeth and made us talk about some completely random comic I'd never heard of. So here we go with more discourse than you ever imagined could exist about Murder in the Night, as presented in Detective Comics #481-482 by Jim Starlin and P. Craig Russell! Reach between your legs and hold on tight!

It's time to get back to the classics of Comic Books Are Burning In Hell: a look at a new one from Olivier Schrauwen (that new one would be Sunday 3/4, from Colorama) and an old one from Martin Vaughn-James (that old one would be The Cage, from Coach House Books). But first: did you hear that one about the time the guy googled a religion the night before his paper was due? There's a comic book version of that. DC published it!